They had watched their leader hand the second satchel to the larger of the Russian gangsters. Watched him open it and inspect its contents--again, exactly as anticipated. As soon as he had confirmed receipt of their actual payment to the second Russian, the men lying in wait had readied themselves, their guns angled downward, their targets in steady view. To insure that the Russians would not be alerted to the deception in time to use their own weapons on their clansmen below, they had held their fire until the mafiyasi started back toward the car, turning away from the guerrillas.

In the moment before the trap was sprung, it appeared the wiry Russian had recognized the deception and turned to alert his partner.

He hadn't had the chance. The gunmen on the slope opened up on the Russians, cutting both down where they stood. The volleys continued for several seconds, spraying the dead bodies, riddling the left side of the car, near which they had fallen, with bullet holes, dissolving its windshield in an avalanche of jagged glass shards.

At last the shooting ceased, its echoes rapidly swallowed by the engulfing silence of the defile. Bits of leaves and branches that had been trimmed by the gunfire fluttered to the road.

Down below, the guerrilla leader waved approvingly to the men behind the screen of foliage, then strode over to Molkov's bullet-riddled corpse and knelt to retrieve the satchel of money that was still slung over his shoulder.

Their mission had been easily accomplished.

Now all that remained was to inform Harlan DeVane.

NINE - HOUSTON, TEXAS APRIL 18, 2001

NINE

HOUSTON, TEXAS APRIL 18, 2001

THE LYNDON B. JOHNSON SPACE CENTER, A CLUSTER of one hundred buildings located off Interstate 45 midway between downtown Houston and the Galveston Island beaches some twenty-five miles southward, is the primary administrative, testing, and astronaut training facility for NASA's manned space exploration program. Its Mission Control Center (Building 30), a windowless, bunkerlike structure at the core of the 1,620-acre complex, has been the locus of ground support and monitoring operations for American space flights since the Gemini 4 launch in June 1965, and contains two Flight Control Rooms--or fickeres--manned round the clock by large teams of flight controllers for the duration of any given mission. For the thousands of scientific researchers, engineers, and management officials who have dedicated their lives to "the expansion of human knowledge of phenomena in the atmosphere and space"--the agency's mandate as defined in its Eisenhower-era charter--the JSC is where that goal has been advanced through imagination, intelligence, audacity, ingenuity, and irrepressible perseverence. For the far smaller handful of candidates who apply and qualify for the astronaut program, it is something even beyond that, a kind of Oz where they are bestowed the magical ruby slippers that will transport them to their hearts' most wished for destination ... only not the familiar terrestrial landscapes of home, as was the case with Dorothy, but the beckoning, mysterious heavens.